


Where are you Christmas

by strixus



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Christmas, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:00:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strixus/pseuds/strixus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duo races a snowstorm to reach his friends, only to receive news he never expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where are you Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to Happy Christmas, written a year later.   
> Song by Faith Hill

The night air smelled of snow and ozone, its bite bitterly cold as the storm front winds barreled unblocked across fallow, frost hardened fields that had been a sea of green corn stalks six months ago. A full moon bright enough to cast shadows hung high in the sky, the light the crisp clear blue white that only a snow moon could be, washing out all but the most brilliant and luminous stars in the navy night sky. The only sign of human life for miles in any direction was a slash of two lane highway, black and unblemished but for a double yellow line. It sliced through the fields, featureless except for the occasional road kill, and illuminated by the moon and a single, blue white halogen headlight that blazed like a super nova in the night.

Duo Maxwell hugged down low on the back of the Little Death, body tucked as close as possible to the rumbling warmth of the tank, braid whipping out from the back of his helmet. The overlay on the helmet screen displayed the GPS and tracking map he was following, and beside it, almost as an afterthought, his speedometer, which showed the fact he was tearing through the darkness at a little over one hundred and sixty kilometers an hour. Duo paid little to no attention to either, his eyes nearly unblinkingly fixed on the road, his lips moving silently, singing along with the chanting rhythm playing on the built in stereo system in the helmet. His mind was blank beyond the music and the road, and the knowledge of the storm that was twenty miles behind him, thundering in the distance, threatening a blizzard snow.

Where are you Christmas  
Why can't I find you  
Why have you gone away  
Where is the laughter  
You used to bring me  
Why can't I hear music play

He had been riding for nearly seven hundred kilometers, most of the day, and it was coming close on midnight as he sped across the empty corn fields. He had been delayed leaving California, and it had set him back nearly a full day on his travel schedule, trying to reach his goal, a small two story farm house in the middle of this agricultural wasteland. Waiting there for him would be three of the four only living people who had meaning in his life: Trowa, Quatre, and Wufei.

Last year, Duo had found his way to the house just before Christmas, and Wufei shortly after him. Trowa and Quatre had been the perfect hosts, and Christmas for the first time since the Eve Wars had ended had meaning for him other than painful memories of the past. He had been in the one place he wanted to be more than anything else, in the company of friends, in a place that felt like home.

 

My world is changing  
I'm rearranging  
Does that mean Christmas changes too

 

But the world had changed so much since last Christmas, or at least so it felt like. The fragile peace of the world government was faltering, albeit slower than it had been expected to. Rouge nationalist states were organizing, attempting to break away from the power of the world government, and in the face of political frustrations, more extreme groups were starting to turn to violence. Duo had seen a car bomb go off on a crowded street in Berlin four months ago. Fresh in his mind, the terror on the faces of the people who had run screaming from the fireball would not leave his dreams.

But while the world was coming apart at the seams, Duo's pain was closer to home. He had followed rumors of Heero Yui to northern California after he had left Berlin, only to find them dead ending in even vaguer rumors of his death. He had heard such rumors before, only to find Heero's trail show up a continent away a month later, but somehow, this time, they felt more real. Three years was a long time to follow a cold trail, and an even longer time to spend looking in dark alleys for someone who felt like a ghost.

Where are you Christmas  
Do you remember  
The one you used to know  
I'm not the same one  
See what the time's done  
Is that why you have let me go.

But still, he could not seem to let go of hope of finding Heero. It had taken him a long time to come to grips with his life after the war had ended and they had each gone their separate ways, and a mental breakdown along the way in a train station in Budapest had sent him in search of the other pilots. He had found Trowa and Quatre, hold up in their farm house in Middle America, an isolated island of happiness and warmth in a world that seemed to get colder every day. He had found home, in a way, in that farmhouse in the cornfields, and now, in that same way, was headed home.

But it still did not feel complete, not with out Heero. As if the dreams had not been enough to convince him, Duo had resisted the impulse of his feelings towards the silent pilot for the whole of the war, and then, Heero vanished with barely a trace not a week after the declaration of peace. Duo had not at first realized that the void left would be so impossible to fill. But every day, Duo felt it more and more, and wished that somehow, someway, he could fill it.

Distantly, Duo was aware of the icy sting of evaporating tears on his cheeks.

Christmas is here  
Everywhere, oh  
Christmas is here  
If you care, oh

An alarm sounded distantly inside his helmet, the GPS system letting him know he was within a hundred kilometers of his destination. He had set it, having promised to call Quatre and Trowa when he was almost there. But he dared not stop and make the call, with the snow storm closing in behind him. He smiled to himself, once again glad he had made the investment in the new helmet, and keyed the music off and the cell phone function on with his left hand.

"Call home." He said, and it dialed obediently. Duo accelerated to one hundred and eighty while it rang.

"Hello?" Trowa's voice sounded slightly annoyed, but not angry.

"Hey, Trowa, its Duo."

"Hmft. I would hope so. Where are you?"'

"About, oh, a little under a hundred kilometers out west, on the border of your land almost. Racing a snow storm coming in from off the mountains, so I'll be there in under an hour."

"Yeah, saw that on the weather bulletin, It's going to dump snow on us for Christmas. Be careful, Duo."

"Will do. Is Wufei already there?"

"Yeah, got in two days ago. You're running late, Duo, remember?"

"Yeah. yeah, lay off. California was rough. I can't wait to get warm."

"Fire is built and waiting." Trowa paused. "And Duo, there is a surprise waiting here for you at the house."

Duo blinked, but didn't flinch. A flinch going this fast could make him road pizza.   
"A surprise? You're speaking in riddles, Trowa. Don't turn into Wufei on me, man."  
"I'm not telling you what it is. Just get your ass here in once piece and you'll see it."

 

If there is love in your heart and your mind  
You will feel like Christmas all the time

I feel you Christmas  
I know I've found you  
You never fade away  
The joy of Christmas  
Stays here in silence  
Fills each and every heart with love

Duo pulled up in front of the farm house less than an hour later, still well ahead of the storm. He pulled the Little Death into the barn, and parked it in the empty stall Trowa now left for him. Pulling off his helmet, he swung the detachable saddlebag off the back of the bike, and threw it over his shoulder.

Trowa and Quatre were waiting for him at the back door, Quatre with a smile on his face, and Trowa with a cup of Irish coffee for him. The hurried him in, out of the cold, and in to the warmth of the house. Nothing had changed, not even the ratty chair that Quatre had been swearing last time to throw out when spring came. Wufei, looking just as sharply dressed as the last time Duo had seen him, was sitting in it, with the dark gray blue pile of fur that was his Irish wolf hound curled up at his feet.

Pleasant conversation was exchanged, greetings and welcomes, catching up on the little pleasant parts of life that had passed during the year. Smiles and laughter blurred out the unpleasantness of the outside world, and Duo felt the hurt in his heart ease slightly as the warmth of the house settled into his bones. He was finally home.

Where are you, Christmas?  
Fills your heart with love

An hour after he had gotten there, Trowa pulled him into the kitchen to talk. The laughter left his face like a mask pulled away, and Duo felt his stomach churn with worry.   
"Remember, I said there was a surprise here for you?" Trowa kept his voice down, looking nervous.

"Yeah. You said that on the phone. What's up?" Duo tried to sound unconcerned.  
Trowa walked over to one of the kitchen drawers, and pulled open what seemed to be the normal kitchen junk drawer. He fished around for a moment, and came up with a postcard sized envelope, opened neatly along the top.

Trowa handed it to him. "This came in the mail two weeks ago, addressed to the four of us." Duo looked down at the address, which was written in a very careful script that Duo did not recognize.

"What? What is it?" Duo hesitated to pull out the letter inside.

"Read it." Trowa said. "Your Japanese was always better than mine."

Duo pulled it out, and found himself looking at a page of carefully hand drawn kanji, neat to the point of obsessiveness. Duo recognized the handwriting without even looking at the contents of the letter.

Could it be? He wondered to himself.

Then he read the letter:

Dear Brothers,   
I will be joining you this Christmas at the farm house. I am sorry for my long absence and constant travel. I know at least one of you has been trying to find me, but it was for good reason that I was away so long. I will be there Christmas Eve, unfortunately I have obligations that will prevent me from being there any sooner.

And beneath the text, as carefully drawn as every other character on the page, was a signature: Heero Yui.


End file.
